Ministerial Statements — COVID-19 Response—Greater Wellington Region Change to Alert Level 2

I wish to make a ministerial statement. Just over an hour ago, Cabinet met and decided, out of an abundance of caution, to move to alert level 2 in the greater Wellington region, which includes the Wairarapa and the Kāpiti Coast, from 6 p.m. tonight to 11.59 p.m. on Sunday. The rest of New Zealand remains at COVID-19 alert level 1. This follows the positive COVID-19 test for the traveller from Sydney who was in Wellington over the weekend. These settings will be reviewed by Cabinet again on Sunday.

This is the first time that we have moved up to alert level 2 to manage the potential risk of COVID-19 in the community. This is not a lockdown. If we all contribute and follow the health behaviours at alert level 2, we can break any potential transmission. I would reiterate that these are precautionary measures that will remain in place while we contact trace and test all of those who we need to. First and foremost, we want to ensure that New Zealanders are not unnecessarily exposed to COVID-19. We have always had a plan for a situation like this. Our contact tracers are currently working at pace, and they have been since we were first notified of this case last night.

The positive case, who is back in Sydney, was being spoken to until well after most people here in New Zealand had already gone to bed, and again early this morning. The person’s four close contacts in New Zealand were notified last night. They were put into self-isolation and they were tested first thing this morning. Two of those results have come back; they were negative. I was advised on the way to the House that the remaining two have also come back and they have also been negative. Locations of interest were identified, published, and updated as more information has come to light throughout the day. We continue to work closely with the case and close contacts to ensure that we’ve got all of the information we need for a swift response.

The decision follows the pause in quarantine-free travel with New South Wales. The decision to do that was made at around 5 o’clock last night. To be clear: that decision was taken before we were notified of the current positive case from the person who had been in Wellington. We’ve taken a deliberately cautious approach to pausing travel when there is community transmission in Australia, and that continues. Where cases cannot be linked to the border, or there are unanswered questions as to their origin, we will consider a pause. That is what we have done again in this case.

A reminder about what alert level 2 means for Wellington: it means that gatherings of more than 100 people should not take place. We know that gatherings pose the biggest risk of spread—this includes weddings, birthdays, funerals, tangi, and church services. Social distancing measures should be observed: 2 metres in public places and in retail stores, like supermarkets and clothes shops, and at least 1 metre in most other places, such as workplaces, cafes, restaurants, and gyms. The wearing of face masks remains compulsory on all public transport, and I also encourage people to wear them when they are waiting for public transport or are in taxis and ride-share services. I’d also encourage people to wear a face covering in any situation where physical distancing is not possible. Businesses can open but they need to follow public health rules, including ensuring physical distancing, record keeping, and the cap of 100 people. Schools and early childhood services also stay open at alert level 2. Hospitality venues must apply the three S’s: seated, separated, and single server.

The message remains: if you are sick, please stay home; don’t go to work or school and don’t socialise. If you’ve got symptoms of a cold or flu, or aches and pains, call your doctor or Healthline and ask about being tested. Please keep track of where you have been at all times. This is a reminder of the importance of our COVID Tracer app and maintaining accurate records of one’s movements. While travel is not restricted under alert level 2, people should be encouraged, and are encouraged, to take their behaviours and take their alert level with them when they are outside of the Wellington region—so, for example, if someone was in Wellington over the weekend and they are now in Christchurch, please do not attend large gatherings. This will help for us all to keep each other safe.

Thank you to the Minister for the update. I’ve just got a series of questions that I think people would be interested in the answer to. When were officials first advised of the Sydney case, when were Ministers notified, and when was the public notified? [Bell rung]

💬 SPEAKER: Sorry. Self-rule on the buttons—we’re going to have a few problems.

I was first informed around 8.45 p.m. last night. My understanding is that the advice came through to officials not long before that. So within an hour or two before that, New Zealand officials were notified of the case. But we certainly weren’t aware of the case when we made the decision to implement the pause. That was made at around about 5 o’clock—somewhere between 5 and 6 o’clock last night.

I think one of the things that many people are a little bit frustrated by is the length of time it took to bring to the public’s attention the locations of interest where this particular individual had been. I wonder if the Minister could offer some comment on why it took till sort of mid-morning and constantly refreshing the Ministry of Health website to get a really full list of exactly where this person had been, given the information was known the night before, or at least a lot of the information was known the night before.

The interview process started last night. It continued again this morning. The interview process is very extensive. It goes through not just where people have been, but exactly where within the location they’ve been. If we take a venue like Te Papa, for example, which is listed twice on the locations of interest, that’s a very large venue with a lot of people. So the contact tracers work hard to identify within that group of people where the risk actually lies. That does involve quite an extensive interviewing process. The first batch of locations of interest was released just before 9 o’clock this morning. Bear in mind that part of the assembly of the locations of interest, assembling all that information together, involved talking to people on the other side of the Tasman. There’s a time zone difference, and then, of course, there’s the fact that it’s the middle of the night, and people do sleep for some of that time. I can say that the team working on this, though, did work through the night to pull the information required together.

I’d also note, and I think that this is important for people to understand, it is not necessarily the locations but the people who were at the locations at the time of potential exposure that is the important part. So the fact that things may have happened at those locations—people may have been at those locations, say, this morning, for example, before they were notified—that in itself does not necessarily increase the risk. The risk existed when people were there at the same time as the case was there.

Just in relation to that, there have been reports that people who were at Te Papa, for example, at the time listed on the locations of interest information on the website who scanned in with the NZ COVID Tracer app have not yet received a notification through the app. Has he been advised of issues with that, and are he and his officials looking into that?

I’m very happy to follow that up. It may well be that the notifications have only been sent to people who have scanned in to certain parts of Te Papa, but I’ll follow that up and find out.

The other bit of information in relation to that is that I’m told that it’s very difficult to actually register if you were at a location of interest. Some MPs may be aware of the fact that the Ministry of Health website says, “Call Healthline”, and if you call Healthline there’s currently, I think, a 60-minute wait, and the prompt says, “Go to the website”, and the website just says, “Call Healthline.” So is there a way of making it a little bit easier for people to register? We are dealing with quite a large number of people, actually, because, as the Minister’s noted, Te Papa had probably hundreds of people there—I’m told there’s an art exhibit there—over the weekend. So is there a way of making that simpler for people?

One of the parts of the contact-tracing process, and one of the parts of the notification process, is also making sure that Healthline and others who are dealing with people’s queries have as much accurate information in as timely a way as possible. For example, when we announce locations of interest, we make sure that Healthline get that information, if not slightly before, at least at the same time as the announcement is made, so that when people ring in, they can disseminate accurate information to people. That is one of the lessons that have been learnt—we’ve got to make sure that Healthline are fully looped in. I do appreciate that there will be wait times for people calling Healthline. Please stay on the line if you have a concern. But, also, my message is please don’t call Healthline if you don’t have a good reason for calling Healthline at the moment. So if you’re not in Wellington and you just want to know what does this alert level change means for you, please don’t call Healthline. We want that line and those call centres to be focused on the people who really need to get the information related to this.

Why did the ministry website this morning continue the confusing nomenclature of “casual plus”, “close plus”, which I think most people agree, on reflection from the February cluster outbreak, was deeply confusing for people? I think Sir Brian Roche has noted that, in and amongst other experts, as well. When you logged on earlier this morning, there continued to be that use of that terminology, and in particular, for example, in relation to the Rydges, it said, “Get a test around day 5”, and it’s now actually been updated to say, “Stay at home, get a test”. So some of the actual advice to people has changed over the course of the morning, even though the actual location of interest hasn’t changed. So I wonder if you could provide a view on that.

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: That’ll be because we want to get information out.

I’m trying to ask serious questions here.

One of the realities of dealing with this is that advice does change as more information comes to light. So we try to share information as quickly as we can, but the reality is if we waited until we had all of the information assembled to be able to give people very clear guidance of exactly what’s required of people in certain situations, we wouldn’t be telling anyone anything at this point. The reality is we try to share it as quickly as we can. As more information comes to light, the advice will change, and so we do ask people to keep tuning in.

My point is around the nomenclature. Is the Government going to continue to use the fourfold classification of close, close plus, casual, and casual plus, and—

💬 Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: It’s not on the site any more.

Well, I know it’s not on the site any more, but it was on the site this morning, and that’s what I want to know from the Minister: why was it on the site this morning, when most people, I think, thought it had been done away with after the confusion from the February outbreak?

As I did indicate, people were working very quickly overnight to get information out there as quickly as possible. That differentiation between casual and casual plus was not deemed to be helpful, and, therefore, it has not continued to be used.

Was the Government advised by the ministry to close the New South Wales - New Zealand travel bubble earlier than yesterday?

No.

Just responding to the ministerial statement on the move to alert level 2 in Wellington. On behalf of the Green Party, we wanted to add a short statement to make it very clear the importance of protecting our whakapapa, protecting our whānau, and protecting our community in a public health - first approach in taking this necessary caution. Again, reiterating the importance of the advice that is given: for example, things like wearing masks, scanning, but particularly picking up on staying home if you’re sick. As always, the Greens will continue to monitor how that particular piece of advice impacts on low-income communities, on front-line workers, and on local small community and neighbourhood businesses. We’ll continue to prioritise that monitoring in our responsibility as a party as well, and just wanting to make sure that we add our voice into supporting the public health and safety - first approach. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Today’s announcement will be saddening for many people in the Wellington region, particularly those in hospitality who are able to open at alert level 2 but find it difficult to make money and actually be viable, given the restrictions. It will also be a test of how far the Government’s response has developed since we last faced these kinds of restrictions back in February. I have a series of questions that I hope the Minister can answer so we can better understand how that is going.

This morning we heard from the Auditor-General that their office doesn’t believe that the Government is prepared to do what in Britain has been called “surge vaccination”. They have talked about some advice for ring vaccination, where vaccination is done at a point of outbreak and then goes out in concentric rings. I just wonder, over the next four days, if the Government has any plan to intensify vaccination in Wellington; does it have the ability to do that to the point that it will make any difference?

That’s not something we’ve discussed at this point. At the moment the risk in Wellington still remains low, which is why we’re talking about alert level 2 and not a lockdown, or alert level 3 or above. In terms of re-allocating vaccine doses from other places around the country in order to move them to Wellington, that is not something that we are currently planning to do.

If level 2 is not a lockdown, is level 3 a lockdown?

Yes, people are required to stay at home at alert level 3; they are not at alert level 2.

The Government received a report from Ayesha Verrall last year which set out a “gold standard” for contact tracing that was described as end-to-end contact tracing from index cases to all contacts within 96 hours, or four days. Does the Government believe that it will achieve that standard this time, having achieved—if I remember correctly—52 percent in both the August and February outbreaks?

Certainly, the contact tracing measures are very good measures. They’ve recently been reviewed and the results of that review have yet to be formalised. We’ve looked at those in light of the fact that the contact tracing system—and Dr Verrall is now part of the Government—was established in the context of potential widespread community transmission. That is not what we have been dealing with most of the last year. So we’ve had another look at those and we’ll make further decisions on whether any of those measures should be changed in due course. But the fact that we are on to this very early, the fact that this is really only five days that we are talking about here—from first potential point of exposure through to today—is a good sign. The fact that our first test results are coming back negative is also a good sign. The teams were isolating people very, very quickly. Again, that is encouraging, but we keep that under review.

So if all the stars are aligning and the circumstances easier than those previously faced as a country, is the Minister saying he expects contact tracing to reach the gold standard level set by Ayesha Verrall’s report a year ago or not?

Well, that’s what they’ll be aiming for.

And does the Minister expect them to reach it?

That will very much depend on the circumstances that we find ourselves facing over the next 48 to 72 hours.

Hope springs eternal. Testing—will there be rapid saliva testing available in Wellington over the coming days?

In cases like this, where we want accurate results, we encourage people to get the nasal pharyngeal test because that is the gold standard for testing.

Does the Government have the capability to roll out saliva testing in a scenario like this? And does it acknowledge that if it was able to do so, there might be less hesitancy from people to get tested? They could test more people faster and therefore more quickly isolate an outbreak.

As we’ve canvassed well before, saliva testing does have a role, but it is less accurate. So in a situation like this where accuracy is important, a 10 percent difference in accuracy can be quite material.

Does the Government have the ability to roll out saliva testing in circumstances it does think appropriate?

Well, yes. And we are.

Could the Government roll out, for example, tens of thousands of saliva tests if they had them contracted? How are those contracts going?

The member is asking a hypothetical question. One of the things that’s important about testing is actually testing the right people rather than testing large volumes of people. So everyone in the debating chamber could go out and take a test now and it wouldn’t necessarily tell us anything. Making sure that we’re testing people who have symptoms or who have been at locations of interest is actually far more important.

Why does the Minister think any Government would randomly test the wrong people? Surely any testing should be targeted at people likely to be infected?

Well, I think the member has just reinforced my earlier point. If you’re going to be targeting people, you want to use the most accurate test available, and that is a nasal pharyngeal polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test.

I wonder if the Minister has paid any attention to the petition to this House of Darryl Clarke on behalf of event organisers, particularly in light of the announcement overnight that the ASB Showgrounds in Greenlane, Auckland has gone into liquidation following multimillion-dollar losses from alert level 2 closures and uncertainty about future alert levels. In that petition, Darryl Clarke and his associates and his petitioners have presented a plan for event centres to be able to open under alert level 2 conditions, just as shopping malls have thousands of people streaming in and out at alert level 2. Given the advent of the liquidation of ASB Showgrounds and an alert level 2 move within 24 hours, will the Government now give that petition greater attention?

I do want to acknowledge that any alert level change has an impact for a wide variety of businesses, community organisations, and people. Our Government makes the decision around alert level escalation based on public health criteria that continues to guide the decision making. We acknowledge that those decisions have a significant impact for people, but we have to continue to seek to eliminate COVID-19 from our community. Those businesses, those organisations would suffer far worse consequences if we found ourselves in the situation of other countries that have not contained COVID-19 and ended up with widespread community outbreaks and rolling lockdowns.

Is it responsible for Government MPs to leave Wellington, as the Minister announced that they would in his press conference at 1pm, when businesses such as hospitality will suffer quite severely from the restrictions being placed on them?

I think the member massively overestimates the amount of hospitality that members of this House consume. But there is not a hard border at alert level 2. People are free to continue to travel at alert level 2, but we do ask them to take their alert level with them.

Kia ora. We respect the—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. Sorry, I thought she was going to seek leave to be added to the list.

Yes, I thought we were.

💬 SPEAKER: If she’s not, I will seek leave on her behalf to be added to the specified party leaders list for the purpose of this debate. Is there any objection to that? There appears to be none.

My apologies, Mr Speaker. I thought we sorted that yesterday.

💬 SPEAKER: No, it needs to be a motion in the House before that occurs.

Ka pai. We respect the decision of the Government to lead with the health response. That’s always been the best response. I guess probably from Te Paati Māori’s perspective there’s a couple of concerns—one, that we take stock and use this as an opportunity to look at what we could be doing differently. We are still continuing with a response that is based on the first time that COVID came here. Where we fit in this regime with this Government, as a cross-party whakaaro, or the way that we can somehow be part of the decision, and most importantly, as a cross-party approach—how and where do we fit in to ensure that there is a strong Māori response? We are aware that there has been a Māori strategy within this COVID response effort. We’re not too sure what it is, in going forward. So we are appealing in some way that there is a stand-up not necessarily of the old COVID response committee but something that serves in that manner.

We are also clear that there have been issues in the provinces and the regions with the testing, and some aren’t able to be stood up quickly. So, again, looking at this from a reflection point, what and where and how do we make sure that this which is clearly going to be the global new norm—how we respond in a way that makes sure that our most vulnerable are considered and protected.

The other thing that I would like to leave for the Minister to consider is that we’re conscious that some of our Māori providers have been asked to reduce their vaccination supply. Taranaki District Health Board, which has been in the news for other matters, is an example, and we do want to be clear that as we look at the strategies going forward we can indeed meet the vaccine requirement.

I guess the other thing is that it’s really important that we put aside politics at a stage, and when we’re dealing with matters that have been successfully considered in our proactive plan as a nation that we’re able to work together, and how that works for us, particularly as Māori, as tangata whenua, as tangata moana and tangata Tiriti united, is a good opportunity for Government to consider a cross-party approach as well.

Nō reira, kia ora koutou katoa. David, stop being naughty.

Chris Hipkins in reply.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ll only respond to those last few comments. I think the member perhaps is a little unfair in her assertion at the beginning that we continue to follow the same formula when we’re dealing with COVID-19 cases now that we did when we first dealt with COVID-19 over a year ago. In fact, we continue to evolve our response, we continue to look at ways to improve it, we continue to refine our methodologies, and people will see that evident here.

In terms of parliamentary scrutiny, I would note that I am appearing before the Health Committee for an hour and a half this very afternoon, where we will be talking about COVID-19, and no doubt there’ll be plenty of questions on that.

In terms of equity, we do monitor our testing and our vaccination rates including for Māori and Pacific communities, in particular. In terms of Maōri vaccines, Māori providers shouldn’t be being asked to scale back, but they will be being asked to stick to the plan. I think it’s a tribute to some of our Māori health providers that they’ve been forging ahead and getting well ahead of plan. We want to be able to support them to continue to do that when we have greater supply of vaccine. So over the next three to four weeks, we are asking them to stick to the plan. From sort of mid to late July, we’ll have greater quantities and, therefore, if they continue to forge ahead, we’ll have more ability to support them and absorb their enthusiasm to do that.

To the Minister, I think it needs to be reminded that during the first response—

Order! We now have a little bit of a problem because I took from the member’s conclusion that she had completed her speech and the Minister has replied, which sort of finishes it all. There is an opportunity later on during the general debate to take further matters forward.